Daniel Perez, Co-founder and CEO, Hinge Health

Daniel Perez is co-founder and chief executive of Hinge Health, which delivers musculoskeletal care, including virtual physical therapy and a wearable stimulator, through employers and health plans. He grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, after his family left Miami, Florida, left an Oxford doctorate to start companies, and has run Hinge since 2014.

Growing Up in Salt Lake City

His mother immigrated from Cuba in 1968. His father followed 12 years later. They met in Miami. In 1990 the family moved to Salt Lake City, where his mother was a substitute teacher and his father worked in restaurants as a dishwasher and a busboy. Household income was about $19,000 a year.

At 13 he was hit by a car, broke an arm and a leg, was airlifted to a hospital, and spent a year in rehabilitation after three surgeries.

He finished high school at 16 and studied biology in the honors college at Westminster University in Salt Lake City.

Founding Hinge with Gabriel Mecklenburg

He and Gabriel Mecklenburg met while both were in doctoral programs in Britain, he at Oxford and Mecklenburg at Imperial College London. They had started two ventures together, the Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable and Marblar, which tried to commercialize academic inventions. He took a leave from Oxford for Marblar and did not go back. In October 2014, drawing on his own year of rehab and on Mecklenburg's year after a judo injury, they sketched Hinge. A prototype existed by December.

Hinge uses an app for virtual physical therapy aimed at acute injuries, chronic pain, and recovery after surgery. Employers such as Target and Morgan Stanley pay so their people can use it. A wearable, Enso, delivers electrical nerve stimulation.

The company started in London, England, and moved to San Francisco, California, in 2017. Sales in the prior year rose 33 percent to $390.4 million, the net loss narrowed to $11.9 million, and the company had filed on March 10 to list on the New York Stock Exchange as HNGE. It then had about 1,400 employees, 2,256 clients, and more than 532,300 members. He was 39.

A First Child in 2024

He and his wife had their first child in late 2024. He and Mecklenburg, who have families, meet on Wednesday nights. Earlier in the company they had met every Saturday morning.

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